The Jewel of Turmish (24 page)

“Your task remains to assemble the jewel,” Allis said, and the sparkle in her eyes told Borran Kiosk that she delighted in telling him that. Attempting it would surely draw the wrath of the Emerald Enclave down on him, though the fear never quite left her.

“You are to call down the destruction,” Allis said, “that Taraketh’s Hive will open for you. Once you have done that, the druids will be driven from Turmish—perhaps even farther beyond before they are able to gain mastery over the jewel’s power.”

Anger twisted inside Borran Kiosk. He spat out the

thick purple tongue, tired of tasting the bile that seemed to hang in the air. T do not do their bidding.”

Allis lifted her chin and rebellion fired anew in her eyes. “You will.”

Unleashing his tongue, Borran Kiosk splintered the wall to the side of her head.

She flinched, but only little, and swallowed hard again. Her gaze met his boldly for a moment before sliding away.

“The people who control you have no control over me,” Borran Kiosk announced.

“They control whomever they wish,” she told him. “You wanted Taraketh’s Hive, didn’t you?”

Borran Kiosk glared at her.

“They can take that from you,” Allis said softly. “They raised the dead that you buried so long ago. They can just as easily return those cadaverous minions back into the ground somewhere short of Alaghôn, only this time the wizards will stop your minions in places that you won’t know of.”

“Don’t threaten me, woman,” Borran Kiosk warned.

“I’m not,” Allis said. “I’m just stating a fact. Perhaps they’ll even see to it that the priests of Eldath lock you away once again.”

“They want something from me,” Borran Kiosk said, and he found himself needing to hear that statement as much as he needed to tell the woman. “They won’t let me fall so easily.”

“If you prove difficult,” Allis said, “they will.”

Borran Kiosk turned from the woman, not wanting to believe her, but he did believe her. She was too calm, too complacent in her words, and she took a certain measured delight in passing them on.

“If your damned wizards come for me,” he said, “they’ll do so at the peril of their own lives.”

“They won’t come for you,” Allis told him. “They won’t have to. You’ll be hunted all over Alaghôn after last night, and though it might take them time to bring you down, they will. They will withhold the gifts they offer you today, and they’ll keep Taraketh’s Hive from you.”

“Gifts?” Interested, Borran Kiosk looked at the basket the werespider had placed on the slanted table.

Allis picked up her dress, which had been ripped considerably as she’d changed forms. Still, she pulled herself into it as best as she could. Her eyes never met his while she dressed.

Crossing to the table, Allis lifted the cloth from the basket and revealed the items inside. She took a small oval mirror from inside a black wooden chest that was filled with padding to protect the mirror. She waved a hand over the mirror, spoke words that Borran Kiosk almost recognized, and placed the looking glass on the tabletop.

“First,” she said, “I bring you proof that the five you buried with the pieces of Taraketh’s Hive have risen.”

Borran Kiosk didn’t need her mystic bauble to tell him that, but he remained silent. Even now he could feel them drawing steadily closer.

Allis pointed to the mirror.

Drawn by the sight of a figure moving within the glass, Borran Kiosk came closer. He peered into the mirror and saw a scene as though through a hazy fog.

A skeleton marched through swamplands with a long stride. Murky water came up to the skeleton’s shins. In the hollows of its chest, lodged behind the breastbone, a jeweled cube burned bright and hard. The skeleton carried a short sword in one fist, and divots of mud still filled its cavernous eyes.

Allis waved her hand again, and the other four skeletons bearing pieces of Taraketh’s Hive came into view, each in turn.

“You see,” she said, “all is as I have promised. They have no will of their own but to serve Malar—and you— in the best way they know how.”

“And what of the other gifts you said you bore?”

Reaching into the basket again, Allis took out a section of gray and pink coral almost as long as her forearm.

She held it out and asked, “Do you sense the death on this?”

“It’s coral,” Borran Kiosk said. He tasted the salty scent of it with a flicking caress of his tongue. Tt reeks of death.”

Intrigue filled him. Even after everything he’d done, all the foul murders he’d committed, nothing had tasted so exquisite.

“Where did you get this?” he asked. “From the Whamite Isles.”

Borran Kiosk’s tongue leaped out again, drawing closer to the coral. “I’ve never tasted death like this. Not even that wrought by my own hand.”

“There has never been death like this before,” Allis said. “The islands are encircled by drowned ones and other undead. This was taken from the reefs that surround the Whamite Isles and was magically altered.”

Borran Kiosk’s tongue flicked out again, and he could sense the magic energies bound within the coral. It was the most powerful thing outside of Taraketh’s Hive that he’d ever encountered.

Allis extended the coral to him and with some trepidation, Borran Kiosk accepted it. As soon as his bony fingers touched the coral, it grew, shimmering as it changed. In a heartbeat, the coral had formed an elbow-length glove of white and pink streaks that perfectly encased his hand. A buzz of power filled the mohrg.

“What is this?” Borran Kiosk asked.

“Power,” Allis answered. “The power to wake the dead of the Whamite Isles and call them to you.”

Borran Kiosk held the glove up before him, admiring it. For a moment, he worried that the mystic thing had ensorcelled him in some way, but he had safeguards—spells and magical items about him—that guaranteed such things could not easily affect him.

The power was real. He felt it surging within the glove and within him.

“Use it,” Allis urged, “and you will raise an army to follow you back here to Alaghôn. No one will be able to stand before them. All of Turmish, and perhaps even the Vilhon Reach, will fall under your power.”

Borran Kiosk flexed the glove upon his hand. It moved as supple as leather, far easier than even the flesh he could remember wearing all those years before.

“And these wizards that you serve,” he said, “they want me to have such power?”

“Serve your own dark desires, Borran Kiosk,” Allis said, “and you will serve theirs.”

Haarn ran, cutting through the overgrown grass that sprouted from the low valley’s marshy ground. Despite the speed at which he’d been moving for hours, he knew he could run for hours more. From the wheezing gasps of his companion, he likewise knew that Druz Talimsir could not.

He grew irritated again at his own inability to leave the woman, as he knew he should have.

I gave her Stonefur’s head, he thought in disgust. That’s all I owed her.

Druz gasped for breath but in a controlled manner, showing training and stamina, but her abilities were nothing when compared to the druid’s. Her passage through the marshlands, punctuated with discordant splats of her boots slapping mud, echoed around them.

Ahead, the valley sloped up again, leaving a thin trickle of stained brown water running through the heart of it. The long rain of the preceding day and night still wound through the land, and a tenday or more would pass before the sun burned away what the ground couldn’t absorb..

Haarn started up the slope, then stopped under a copse of trees. Scanning the ground for the trail he was certain he’d find, he waited for Druz.

Tymora’s blessing,” Druz gasped. “I thought we were never going to stop running. Have you lost the trail?”

“No,” Haarn said, only just keeping the scorn from his voice.

The skeleton’s trail was there for anyone to see. Over the last three miles, the stink of moldy, dead flesh had carried more strongly on the air. They were much closer than they had been, practically on the undead abomination’s heels.

“Wait here,” he told her.

“What are you going to do?”

Haarn didn’t pause to answer her. It was surprising how many questions she asked, but he supposed it was because she was used to being in control.

“Haarn,” she called after him, irritating him further because she must have known how far her voice would carry.

“Wait,” he growled over his shoulder.

He raced up the side of the valley, finding the firmest spots and rocky shelves at a glance. Running in zigzag fashion, he spotted the trail he was looking for.

A dolodrium plant, one of those that sprang up when the rainy season started and turned the drylands to verdant marsh, lay broken and twisted on the ground. An imprint beneath it, the one that had broken the frail plant, showed three toes and the ball of a skeletal foot. The thing he pursued had come this way.

Despite his pressing need to eradicate the undead thing, Haarn took a moment to harvest the dolodrium blossoms. The plant was hard to find even when someone was looking for it. When harvested properly—from within the third morning sun to the moon of the fourth night, only a small window of time—the dolodrium plant yielded medicinal flowers that could be crushed and boiled into a weak tea that helped cure infections and headaches.

Broadfoot snuffled only a few feet away and stepped out of the trees. The bear stood on his rear legs and scented the air, snuffling again. The prey was near, and Broadfoot knew it.

Silently agreeing, Haarn followed the trail across the uncertain foundation of too-wet ground. In three other places he spotted evidence of the skeleton’s passing, all of

them marked by bare spots where the yellowed grass had been torn away.

Haarn continued up the hill, catching Broadfoot from the corner of his eye as the bear lumbered uphill as well. Reaching the crest, he flattened and stayed within the cover offered by the scraggly brush and tall grasses.

Gazing down the hillside on the other side of the valley, aware of the hot afternoon sun burning down on the back of his neck, Haarn spotted deer, rabbits, ground squirrels, and nearly three dozen different kinds of sparrows, finches, and songbirds. There were no paths, save for game trails. “Civilized” men from Turmish and other places around the Vilhon Reach had not yet found the valley.

Blowing his breath out, controlling the anger that filled him, Haarn stared down at the yellowed ivory form that forced its way through the brush and tall grasses covering the eastern side of the short mountain range. Revulsion filled the druid.

The skeleton showed no affinity for the living world around it, merely bulling its way through whatever obstacles it encountered. Already, the skeleton was a quarter of a mile away and moving at a steady pace, unhampered by the fatigue of flesh, running on the mystical energies that had called it forth.

Broadfoot snuffled again, sounding angry this time.

Wanting to take advantage of surprise, Haarn lifted his arms and spoke a shapeshifting spell. Magic flowed throughout his body, molding it along the fines of the great horned owl. Pain, only a little discomforting because it was so small, echoed throughout his body as he changed. His father had told him that not every druid with the ability to shapechange suffered through any pain at all, but that some agonized during the spell.

In his owl shape, Haarn leaped from the mountain’s crest and caught the north, northeasterly winds. The druid lifted from the mountain, tilting his wings.

Broadfoot grumbled in displeasure. The bear had never cared for Haarn’s abilities to alter his shape and leave him behind.

An owl’s sight was far keener than Haarn’s own half-elf eyes. The terrain revealed itself to him in intimate detail, and he seemed able to track every motion. He whipped his wings, gaining altitude to get a better view of the countryside.

He saw Druz Talimsir stumble up the mountainside, stubbornly not giving up the pursuit. Broadfoot took to the foliage, racing down the mountain to intercept the skeleton, which so far had given no notice that it even knew anyone was around. Marsh hares and brightly colored birds scattered ahead of the skeleton. Screams from the angry birds that had been feasting on floating eggs and drowned lizards and rats filled the sky.

Haarn winged toward the skeleton. Flying came naturally to the druid in his owl form, and he’d had years of experience. Sunlight glinted from his claws as he sped toward the skeleton.

Something warned the creature before Haarn arrived. The druid knew he made no sound ghding on the owl’s wings. He thought perhaps his shadow had fallen over the ground in front of the skeleton, then he realized he’d flown into the sun, which still hung slightly to the east. He reached the skeleton only a heartbeat before his shadow did.

Still, the undead thing whirled and drew up an ivory arm to ward off Haarn’s attack.

Haarn raked at the creature with his owl’s claws. The hard black nails tried to rip the ivory bone of the skeleton’s uplifted arm, but left only scratches as Haarn passed.

Wheeling high in the sky, shutting his eyes tight against the sun, Haarn gloried in the rush of air sweeping by him. Part of his owl’s mind wanted nothing more than to follow the wind and leave anything earthbound far behind him, but he controlled the impulse and stretched out his wings, ghding around in a tight circle to his left. Glancing down, he spotted his prey.

The skeleton ran, ducking under scraggly trees and brush, disappearing at times, but the cover didn’t last for long. Though the ground was marsh at the moment, it

was normally dry and baked hard. Only the hardiest grasses and less demanding of trees thrived there.

Haarn flew, speeding through the air and judging from the brief glimpses of ivory when the skeleton would come into view again. When it did, he struck the foul creature in the back of the head, knocking it off balance.

Flapping his wings and dropping the right one so he could see the skeleton, Haarn watched the undead thing tumble to the ground. Ruby lights glinted from the skeleton’s rib cage.

Haarn tried to identify the thing inside the skeleton but couldn’t. Turning his attention back to the attack, he swooped again, hoping that the force with which he struck the skeleton would knock its skull from its shoulders. He knew that action sometimes destroyed the spell that animated a skeleton.